The Game of Lawsuits – Another One Filed Against Facebook Over Data Misuse

Spain is the latest to file a lawsuit against Facebook. A local consumer group said Wednesday that it will sue the social networking giant over misusing personal data of 26 million Facebook users in Spain. In a class action lawsuit, the group said that it will represent all Spanish users of Facebook, not just those affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The lawsuit is looking at getting at least €200 for every Facebook user in the country.

“OCU [the consumer rights group] said it believes ‘Facebook violated legislation regarding data protection,’ because it did not tell users how it would use their data, nor ask for their authorisation,” AFP reported. “It said it had acted in coordination with other consumer rights groups in Portugal, Belgium and Italy which will file similar lawsuits in their countries.”

Today’s announcement follows another similar announcement on Monday made by France where a class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and LinkedIn for misusing personal data of their consumers.

GDPR has resulted in several lawsuits for Silicon Valley tech giants

The General Data Protection Rules went into effect this past Friday in Europe. On the same day, an Austrian privacy activist filed lawsuits against Facebook (demanding a fine of €3.9 billion) and Google (demanding €3.7 billion in fines). The lawsuits argue that Google and Facebook aren’t complying with the privacy rules by asking users to hit on the agree button to be able to access their services.

This creates a system where users either have to agree with the companies’ privacy policies or get booted out of their platforms – something that could be in violation of GDPR rules as noted in our earlier piece on the highlights of GDPR. Tech companies continue to dispute these claims suggesting that their revised policies are enough to comply with GDPR. It will be interesting to see the results of these and several similar lawsuits that these companies are going to get hit with.